MANAGING CAPABILITY

Managing Capability

Managing Capability Resource Based Analysis BMW

In assessing the position in the BMW Group, one must bear in mind that systems of innovation in other Groups show marked differences that tend to be associated with their particular environment and mix of services and manufacturing capability and capacity. Such differences have implications for policy formulation. Policy interventions may be desirable or even necessary but they must be informed by local conditions and based on the study of innovation processes, organisations and institutions over extended periods of time.

It is necessary to identify which elements of the system are subject to inertia or have become 'locked in' to inappropriate structures and trajectories, so that real deficiencies can be addressed and the economy launched on what Edquist (1997) has called “the dynamic co-evolution of knowledge, innovations, organizations and institutions”. The Entrepreneurial System A key question for the BMW Group is how entrepreneurial is the Group? To be successful, its enterprises must be both innovative and entrepreneurial. This section assesses its level of enterprise. To do this we looked at a variety of indicators of entrepreneurial performance including: • The level of new company start-ups by Group and county • The performance of BMW Group companies on national Top Business lists including the Top 100 manufacturing companies in Germany, Deloitte and Touche's Fastest 50 High Technology Growth companies and the Top 50 exporting companies The number of new company start-ups for 1999-2002 comes from two sources: • New companies registering with the Revenue Commissioners each year • Private communication with Company Formations Germany (CFI)

BMW Group accounts for only 13% of the new company start-ups over the last four years. This does not take into (Allan Aufzen 2007 Pp. 78) consideration any new businesses start-ups, which were not registered as companies, i.e. self-employed owner manager businesses. This is considerably lower than the BMW Group's share of the national population. Over the four-year period, the total number of new national company start-ups was 62,889 and the number of new start-ups in the BMW Group was 8,415. A more meaningful way to examine this data would be to normalise it on a population basis, e.g. per 10,000 of the population.(See Appendix)

The national average number of new start-up companies is 160.5 companies per 10,000 of the population based on the above data over four years (or 40.1 per annum).The equivalent BMW Group figure is 81.1 new start-ups per 10,000 of the population over four years or roughly 50% of the national average (or 20.3 per annum). It shows that registrations by county in the BMW Group for the four-year period 1999 to 2002, normalised per 10,000 of the population.All counties were lower than the national average of 160 new company registrations per 10,000.The four highest counties were Louth, Cavan and Westmeath and Monaghan. It would provide a more complete picture if these figures included unregistered businesses as well as registered companies. Some indication of these can be obtained from the Revenue Commissioners Annual ...